Washington Hopes It`s Bill Clinton To The Rescue

November 25, 1992|By William Neikirk.

WASHINGTON — Bill Clinton has swept Washington off its feet. And now it is assumed here that he will have a highly successful administration, chiefly because he knows how to play to the vanity of this city`s blueblood Establishment.

But this is an assumption that is as dubious as Jack Kent Cooke`s abortive plan to move the Washington Redskins to Virginia. For all their presumed clout, Washington`s hidden power brokers do not possess make-or-break magic for any administration coming to town.

Jimmy Carter`s chief sin was said to be that he snubbed his nose at these insiders and brought in an unsophisticated rabble from Georgia to take over the town, sort of like ``Gone With the Wind`` in reverse.

Actually, Carter enjoyed a higher standing with the American people when he demonstrated himself to be an outsider, ready to do battle with traditional Washington forces that the public perceived were only making the country worse.

Carter`s ability to get anything done collapsed for other reasons. His economic policy only led to more inflation, and a crisis of confidence in world markets. The hostage crisis made his administration look terribly weak, and long gasoline lines turned the public against him.

Then, in the waning days of his administration, Carter turned to the Washington Establishment for help, seeking advice on how to rescue his presidency and lift up the country`s mood. He responded with the infamous

``malaise`` speech in which he blamed the public-not Washington-for his problems. Ronald Reagan couldn`t have asked for a better speech.

Clinton should know better than almost any politician in the country-with the possible exception of Ross Perot-that Washington has the smell of failure about it. If any general conclusion can be made about the Establishment here, it is that it long ago lost touch with the rest of the country and is pushing old solutions for new problems.

One more thing should not be overlooked. In cozying up to the president-elect, the Establishment of the nation`s capital is also concerned about its self-interest.

Washington has become more of a city obsessed with its own survival, and is seeking to milk taxpayers for all it can for a rather narrow economic agenda. Clinton`s proposal for a high-speed rail system, for example, would benefit this city more than it would most others in the country, because of the dense population along the East Coast and the slow speed of rail travel between here and New York.

Something happened to Washington in the 1980s that it thought would never happen: The white-collar recession slapped the region extremely hard. Asset deflation drove down housing prices and put several financial institutions out of business. The city has a healthy share of empty office buildings in desperate need of new tenants.

So Washington, perhaps more than any city in the country, has high hopes for a Clinton-style rescue of a flagging local economy, one that will fill all those office buildings with consultants greedy for a heavier flow of federal dollars.

But Clinton would do well to remember that he is president of the entire country, and that each region is a distinct, economic unit different from Washington, or any other.

The farther these regions are from Washington, the less attention they tend to get. This was why Silicon Valley, upset because the Bush

administration didn`t even know the location of the Bay Area, turned to support Clinton. The executives there had learned a valuable Washington lesson: Suck up to power quickly. And Clinton has proposed some high-tech incentives to keep them happy. John Sculley of Apple Computer, the company founded by entrepreneurs, has turned into an industrial-policy junkie.

But it is hard to see how the Establishment here is going to be happy with Clinton if the president-elect keeps his promises. After all, he wants to cut federal employment by 100,000 and administrative costs by 3 percent, much of which would be slashed from the rather hefty Washington bureaucracy.

That`s a lot of gravy to take off the table for a city accustomed to slapping it on their biscuits rather thickly.

But if Clinton is true to his campaign pledges, he will reform the federal government so that more power shifts to the states. Local governments and local organizations will be trusted with carrying out federal policies, which would ``steer`` instead of ``implement.`` It takes fewer people to steer than it does to implement.

To put it another way, Washington has long exported government to the rest of the country, and not all of it has been good government. As Chicago Mayor Richard Daley pointed out the other day, some of it has been quite costly to the city and its residents. It`s not that the various regions need less government. They just need less of it from Washington.

That is, except for Washington, which is the one place in the country hoping the bureaucracy does not shrink and its power remains intact. Can Bill Clinton cross them?